World Forum
 
TRUTH copyright © Edward Graham Macfarlane. All rights reserved.
 
 
 
MESSAGE NUMBER THREE 
  
The importance of precise naming and defining  
  
The NAMING of movements and political proposals has an importance which can hardly be overstressed.  
For example there is a world of difference between 'Communism' and 'Russian Communism'.  
There is also an equally great difference between the following pairs of terms:  
    'Christianity' and 'Scottish Christianity'. 
    'Catholicism' and 'Roman Catholicism'. 
    'Humanism' and 'British Humanism'. 
    'Muslim' and 'Iranian Muslim'. 
    'Scottish Nationalism' and 'English Nationalism'. 
    'English Nationalism' and 'British Nationalism'. 
    'British Nationalism' and 'European Nationalism'. 
    'European Nationalism' and 'World Nationalism'. 
    'World Nationalism' and 'Universal Nationalism'.
Now I have deliberately chosen these pairs of terms for comparison partly to indicate the wide scope of the interests I think we truth-seekers have to show as well as indicate in the latter part of the list a sort of natural progression of the widening of patriotism which I wish to see everybody adopting as a matter of conscious principle into their own minds. 
  
I have already said that nationalism is powerful as a mental concept and that its power is superior in practice to the calls of religious or irreligious faiths. It follows from this that the KIND of nationalism a particular human mind adopts as the framework of its political endeavours is of the UTMOST IMPORTANCE not only to the person concerned but to everybody in the same social setting.  
  
NO form of nationalism is to be despised, particularly when it is being considered in relation to the scale of group loyalty which is less in scope than its own. 
  
For example 'Scottish' nationalism is a superior form of social loyalty to the 'clan' loyalties which were commonly dominant before loyalty to the clan chiefs gave way to loyalty to the Scottish leaders or kings.  
In the same way 'British' nationalism is not a thing to be despised when it is considered in relation to 'Scottish' nationalism. (I am writing here and always as a 'Universal Nationalist'.) On the contrary it is to be preferred and considered superior to Scottish nationalism because, in the eyes of a Universal Nationalist, the wider the scope of a form of nationalism the more likely is it to unite more people in peaceful co-operation.  
Considered in relation to European nationalism of course the 'British nationalism' is deplorable. British nationalism is as deplorable relative to European nationalism as clan nationalism is to Scottish nationalism. 
  
And of course when I condemn British nationalism as deplorable I must not be being thought to be merely reproving Mrs Thatcher or Mr Callaghan or any of the large coterie of anti-Europeans in the Conservative and Labour parties who are British establishment minded enough to wish to continue to adhere to British  
nationalism and tacitly to reject European nationalism which is the necessary mental basis for European federation which is the essential principle and main objective of the Treaty of Rome.  
  
I do condemn all these politicians of course and could wish for nothing better than to see them all driven out of political office in Britain by a new political party dedicated first and foremost to European nationalism.  
The people (electors and voters on political matters) in Britain must somehow be persuaded to adopt the principle of European nationalism in preference to the principle of selfish British nationalism which is what they are now being offered by the Conservative and Labour parties. 
  
And of course it is important that the electors and voters become European (at least) thinkers, so far as nationalism is concerned, because only then will we be able to hope for the British nationalist and the Scottish nationalist politicians ALL to be rejected and put out of political office. 
  
But it isn't only British voters that I am addressing. Keep in mind that I am a UNIVERSALIST NATIONALIST (which really means that I stand ready not just to socialise this planet but to socialise beyond the Milky Way if possible! - look out 'Star Trek', Macfarlane is on his way!) and thus I am addressing the electors and voters in France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, etc., etc., to become GOOD Europeans first and foremost so that we can get the first prototype UNITED STATES OF EUROPE properly established and thus ready to proceed to the wider-still political unification which is implicit in my quest for UNIVERSAL NATIONALISM. 
  
The electors and voters in the U.S.A. and Russia and China and India and Africa and Australia and South America and Canada and Japan, etc., etc., etc., should also be listening because the principle of UNIVERSAL NATIONALISM is the effective uniting principle for the kind of world government which is absolutely essential for the peaceful and civilized conduct of human society on this planet. 
  
The divisions between nations and nationalisms is without question THE MOST DANGEROUS FEATURE FACING THE EXISTENCE OF LIVING THINGS ON THIS PLANET AND PERHAPS IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE.  
This is why human beings must give PRECEDENCE to thinking about the choice of nationalisms before them and to make sure that as many people as possible are persuaded and EDUCATED to choose universal nationalism in preference to any other smaller-scale of nationalism whatsoever.  
Having indicated the ultimate goal of my discussion of the meanings and significances of various named social movements I would like now to deal more closely with some of them in order to try to clarify the great importance of precedence of loyalties in these matters.  
  
It became clear to me not long after I began to pursue my practice of trying to influence social affairs by letters to the newspapers that the oft-proclaimed notion that 'Britain had the most liberal press in the world' was largely a myth.  
At first the suppression of certain letters (i.e. their NON-SELECTION by letters editors) was excused by me on the obvious grounds that not all letters could be expected to be chosen for publication since letter-space was limited and editors were possibly having hundreds of letters submitted to them every day. 
  
However I began to see that there appeared to be taboos operated by editors on certain subjects and that nearly ALL newspaper editors were operating the SAME SET OF TABOOS.  
Continued perseverence despite NON-SELECTION of letters on certain subjects then gave way to the emergence of theories concerning the thinking of the editors which were the background to their methods of selection.  
I discovered early on that any criticism of royalty or the principle of monarchy for Britain was a NO-NO! 
  
I also discovered that any criticism of religion or of the establishment of certain churches were NO-NOs as well. And then I noticed that nearly every newspaper made a practice of inviting clergymen to write little sermons or meditations which were given a prominent place on their leader page I decided that the editors must be either ordered to do this from above or have a personal belief in this sort of thing. In other words these newspapers are in the business of bending the minds of the people towards giving acceptance to and support for the principles of religious belief. 
  
Actually I had noticed in other connections - I was educated in a British school and teacher- training college - that the mind-bending towards religious beliefs was carried on day by day and year by year in every school and teacher- training establishment throughout Britain. And even in schools and colleges which are reputedly giving all pupils and students an education for liberal democracy the bias of the minds of those in charge is such that all schools and colleges effectively SUPPRESS all references to agnosticism and atheism or free thought or rationalism in their history and civics lessons. 
  
Now in the eyes of a humanist like myself these facts are quite deplorable and continue to be ignored by all politicians of every British party and probably of other parties in the various member-states of the E.E.C. as well. I have written to the leaders of all the political parties asking for support for humanist measures such as pursuit of the federation of the states in the E.E.C. into a fully federated United States of Europe and I find that, apart from Mr David Steel of the Liberal Party, there is no sign of support for this principle. 
  
In the interests of getting a fair deal for humanism in the newspapers I have tried to promote the disestablishment of the churches by putting this principle on the manifesto of the World Parliament Party for which I stood as a parliamentary candidate in Dundee-East in I952 and again in I970. But I didn't even get one question on this subject which seems to me to indicate how thoroughly the brain-washing of the electors has been done by the British educational system and the back-up given to these teachings in the establishment newspapers.  
  
As I see it the reason for this enormous loss to the minds of the people of Britain can be traced to a very fundamental principle of British ideological thinking. The editors of newspapers will boast that they stand for 'freedom of religious opinion' and they often bring out articles which condemn countries like Russia for failing to provide 'freedom of religious opinion' to their citizens. 
  
Now the difficult thing to realize is that although this charge is true in relation to the particular expression 'freedom of religious opinion' it has become clear to me that the Soviet system could equally justly accuse the British nation of failing to provide 'freedom of irreligious opinion'. 
Now I come in between both of these national systems because I reject the establishment in Britain just as much as I reject the establishment of Soviet Russia.  
It all hangs on the use and definition of one word - RELIGION. 
  
Now many books have been written about the meaning of 'religion'. But the absence of strict agreement on what the word MEANS has been the source of much misunderstanding and confusion. I have seen humanists take the view that humanism is a religion or that religious people can be atheists and so on but in order to deal fairly with the occurrence of ,religion' I think we MUST define 'religion' as 'belief in a God' or 'obedience to divine rules' or 'a state of mind in which the believer accepts the existence of a supernatural person or personality which has placed living things in this universe in pursuance of some divine plan which people must accept on a basis of simple faith.'  
If a definition for 'religion' which is in keeping with any of these three statements is accepted as FINAL we can now begin to make some sense of a statement which I would accept as universally tenable - i.e. tenable by both 'religious' and 'irreligious' people alike - namely an AGNOSTIC position. 
  
I find that an AGNOSTIC position is the BASIC stance which I would expect EVERYBODY in a LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC STATE to adopt.  
In order to clarify this very important point let me now show how this compares with the ESTABLISHMENTS in Russia, Britain and World federal states successively in what I would regard as the THEORETICAL BACKGROUND positions which have given rise to these three very different ideological societies.  
    (1) Russia is an ATHEISTIC state - where EVERYBODY is expected to be ATHEISTIC as a matter of having their FIRST LOYALTY.  
    (2) Britain is a CHRISTIAN state - where EVERYBODY is expected to be CHRISTIAN as a matter of having their FIRST LOYALTY.  
    (3) Any FEDERATED LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC state (e.g. U.S.A. or U.S.E. which means a UNITED STATES OF EUROPE just as U.S.A. means UNITED STATES OF AMERICA) - where EVERYBODY is expected to be AGNOSTIC as a matter of having their FIRST LOYALTY. 
It is this LAST position that I think MUST be adopted as MANKIND'S FINAL CHOICE if they decide to create a WORLD state which is based on similar principles to those which have been adopted for the U.S.A. and the kind of U.S.E. which I think MUST be brought into being before we can be able to say, with certainty, that THE TREATY OF ROME HAS NOW BEEN FULLY IMPLEMENTED! 
  
Now it is important to realize right here that THERE CAN BE NO QUESTION of uniting (under a common constitution of federation or something similar) ANY TWO SOVEREIGN states, far less the number of ex-states in the European Economic Community, unless GENERAL AGREEMENT is established on this basic matter of whether the state is to be ATHEISTIC or CHRISTIAN or MUSLIM or HINDU or BUDDHIST or AGNOSTIC, etc. 
  
That the U.S.A. has been successfully established for many years and has expanded since its original 48 states to the present 50 states, which are all combined into a federated republic, shows that an AGNOSTIC state is a viable conception which could - and I rather think actually WILL be employed to unify not only the component states of the E.E.C. in Europe but later on will unify the whole world into a WORLD FEDERAL UNION OF ALL STATES.  
This is a political ideal which has not yet really gripped the imaginations of most people in the much divided world but I have every hope and confidence that this ideal is the one BEST SUITED for use to unify the world.  
  
I cannot really see the old British theory of a world based on CHRISTIAN principles ever really coming into being. CHRISTIANITY has proved to be far too fractionizing within even Britain itself for it ever to be chosen or able to unify even a small land area like Britain. Recent experience within Great Britain has shown that even the difference between Presbyterianism in Scotland and Anglicanism in England is sufficient to show a tendency for Scotland to separate off into a separate sovereign state. Possibly not even Scottish Nationalists would acknowledge that it is the fractionizing of Christianity that is contributing to the movement for a Separate Scottish nation but the emergence of a Scottish republican movement within the general Scottish National movement shows that matters of faith are important in all state formation. Scottish Nationalism is really doomed to frustration by the fractionizing that goes on within every faith-based form of state.  
  
Here I would include atheistic Russia as one of these FAITH-BASED STATES although according to British Christians ATHEISM does not rank as a RELIGION and consequently atheists have a hell of a time trying to get into the newspapers or on to the Christian-based broadcasting system within the area of British Christian-dominated theorizing. (e.g. The British Conservative, Labour and Liberal parties which are all historically allied to Christian theorizing, which is why they are inhibited from abolishing established religions and the monarchy from the British scene.)  
  
In the U.S.A. however the writers of the founding constitution of the U.S.A. had the foresight to INSIST upon the elevation of AGNOSTICISM to superiority over EVERY RELIGION OR IRRELIGION and although some of the traditional thinking of British Christianity lingered on in the minds of the American settlers (and caused aberrations like the inscription of 'In God We Trust' to appear on the coinagel) the social climate for the expression of atheistic ideas in the U.S.A. is much better than in Christian Britain itself.  
  
This is a better and fairer kind of society to have and this is why I have every confidence that all significant supra-national mergers of democratic states in the world in future will be modelled on the AGNOSTIC principle which is basic to the U.S.A. constitution. 
  
Here I ought to make it quite clear however that the U.S.A. (unlike Britain) is not content with 'Freedom of Religion'. Not at all, the message from the U.S.A. is that we must have 'Freedom for all Faiths' - the difference being that the latter expression specifically includes atheism among the 'Faiths' whereas the older British CHRISTIAN ideology simply ignores atheism as an ILLEGITIMATE attitude of mind. 
  
Here, I firmly believe, is where U.S.A. constitutional ideology is SUPERIOR to British CHRISTIAN ideology which has deformed education all over Britain and wherever the British CHRISTIAN influence has spread. 
  
Of course it has to be admitted that the constitution -making in the U.S.A. must have been far more clearly conceived in the minds of the original writers of the constitution than it is in the minds of those in charge of American newspapers, schools, colleges and broadcasting systems. 
  
The people who tend to achieve positions of authority in matters of that kind are often the scum which rises to the top of a social order for the simple reason that they will pretend to conform where a man with more philosophical integrity would scorn to do so. There is a book which could be written on this subject by someone who is not afraid to risk prosecution for personal slander of various well-known persons throughout the world. But most of the thinking people of the world will be able to place many famous people into the category of chancers whose fame would never have been spread around the world unless they had violated strict honesty in working their way into positions of eminence.  
But to return to our subject of the superiority of a state which provides 'FREEDOM OF FAITH' instead of mere 'FREEDOM OF RELIGION' or 'FREEDOM OF IRRELIGION'. I wish it to be clearly understood that I am in no doubt about this in my own mind and that I am looking for persons all over the world who are willing to bet their own lives that 'Freedom of Faith' is a MUST which should be adamantly sought for and insisted upon for the future unifying constitution -making for the United States of Europe as well as beyond that to the constitution -making for the whole world which must rank for PRECEDENCE in the minds of all the really GOOD persons in the world.  
CHRISTIAN unity I have condemned for its fractionizing tendencies. But I must say here that MUSLIM unity (as in Iran, Pakistan, etc.) is equally fractionizing since it has developed rival sectarianisms (SUNNITES and SHI-ITES) in much the same way as Christianity has developed Roman Catholicism and Presbyterianism, Methodism, Congregationalism, Anglicanism, etc., etc. 
  
In the same way, and for similar reasons I condemn the Russian Soviet choice of 'Freedom for Atheists only' since this involves those who wish to express themselves in some sort of religious terms with a problem of repression of their lives which is very similar to the kind of repression which atheists experience in a British Christian context. 
  
I therefore condemn ALL those people who wish to found a state upon a particular positive faith such as CHRISTIANITY, ISLAM, ATHEISM, ROMAN CATHOLICISM, and so on.  
AGNOSTICISM is the only choice we can make which is FAIR TO ALL PEOPLE IRRESPECTIVE OF WHETHER THEY ARE CHRISTIAN OR ROMAN CATHOLIC OR MUSLIM OR ATHEIST OR ANYTHING ELSE.  
  
This is why I am urging that the AGNOSTIC state is the ideological pattern which should be consciously chosen to do service in the United States of Europe and all the future progressively larger mergers which will at last take us to the ultimate consummation of the ideal of a world state which will be a Federal Republic of the World based on AGNOSTIC ideology so that ANY PERSON will get the right to do his or her own speculation concerning the ultimate significance of, or PURPOSE of, living things in the universe.  
Clearly the development of space technology is taking mankind ever nearer to the corporate social unity of the human race on this planet. That is why we must be getting down to the task of deciding the constitutional principles of a world-wide social state. 
  
After all it is social ideological differences of aim which give rise to separate states and if we have many militarized states chasing different ideals, we are setting the scene for international and inter-alliance competitions and wars which are soaking up human beings and human production potential in activities, which can only destroy mankind if the ideological differences are not removed and replaced by a common aim and a common citizenship which can only result in some form of world social order.  
    Can you really see Christians uniting mankind? 
    Can you really see Muslims uniting mankind? 
    Can you really see Atheists uniting mankind? 
    Can you really see Roman Catholics uniting mankind?  
    Can you really see ANY ONE of the multitudinous forms of theisms or atheisms uniting mankind? 
I put it to you that ALL these possibilities are hopeless solutions for a reasonable form of world social order. But we have seen that the AGNOSTIC solution has WORKED for many years in the case of the United States of America and that there is no sign of it fractionizing as has been the case with Christianity or Communism or Islam, etc., etc.  
Communism, like Democracy, has proved to be capable of disintegration into warring national states because national patriotism has provided differing groups of people with conflicting aims which create the conditions for international competition. The fact that each nation-state seeks first its own selfish national interests - ideologically instilled into the minds of every new pupil in the schools of every nation-state. This is why there is such a great danger from international wars. And of course the only way to REMOVE these CONFLICTING PURPOSES and CONFLICTING STATES is to ABOLISH the teaching of patriotisms by establishing a COMMON PURPOSE in place of the CONFLICTING PURPOSES. 
  
In the case of Communism the fractionizing of Marxist constitutional theorising began almost immediately by the arising of a difference of opinion between Stalinists and Trotskyists (Russian patriotism vs World patriotism). As you know this difference of opinion resulted in the murdering of Trotsky by Stalin's henchmen, but of course the ideological aim of world Marxist patriotism did not die with the person of Trotsky. There are many world Marxist patriots who are busily trying to propagate that ideology all over the world and they are infiltrating political parties and national areas wherever they think they will be able to find supporters for their ideological cause. 
  
Another nail in the coffin of the success of atheistic Communism occurred when Tito organized national Marxism in Yugoslavia. Then, because the aim of Yugoslavian Marxism is quite distinctly different from Russian Marxist patriotism there arose the future possibility of international competition and war between Russia and Yugoslavia.  
Then the Marxism in China became dominated by an ideology of Chinese patriotism and this distinctly different movement made the theoretical and practical possibility of international wars between Russia and China or China and Yugoslavia or Russia and Yugoslavia all very possible. 
  
As I pointed out earlier any form of nationalism tends to take precedence over any resident form of faith irrespective of whether the faith concerned is theistic or atheistic. 
  
It is at this point that it is necessary for me to stress that we must adopt a CONSCIOUS AIM to create a WORLD AGNOSTIC STATE if we are to avoid the fractionizing possibilities endemic in all FAITHS as well as the divisions due to small patriotisms. 
  
We need a conscious element of AGNOSTICISM to bridge the many forms of faith and a WORLD PATRIOTISM to foil all the divisive influences of many local patriotisms.
 
 
Edward Graham Macfarlane 
108 Forthill Road 
Broughty Ferry 
Dundee 
Scotland 
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tel & fax: +44 (0)1382 730971 
Email: globdem@sol.co.uk 
Edward Graham Macfarlane
 

 

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